


Like the Blind Leading

by TheColorBlue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Autism Spectrum, M/M, Steve Rogers on the autism spectrum, Tony Stark is implied on the spectrum, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4721291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Steve was drawing to impress Bucky, instead of talking like a normal kid should have been doing, and something about that got to Bucky. It got under his skin.</i>
</p><p>Or, Steve is on the autism spectrum before autism is an official diagnosis in the United States.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bucky

**Author's Note:**

> Written on account of [this](http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/post/128234166349/neurotribes-examines-the-history-and-myths) and [this rambling I did](http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/post/128242724329/thanks-to-that-fresh-air-interview-suddenly-i).
> 
> The other thought I had: is that the autism spectrum is such a broad topic, along with that idea "if you meet one autistic person, you meet one autistic person" and also I'm pretty aware of the fact that if and when I write about autism, it is definitely not going to be quite like what other people write, because of reasons pertaining to me. So I dunno. I may or may not be writing this fic "the right way" but I decided to post it anyway.

Steve Rogers wasn’t exactly conventionally handsome, and it had less to do with the look of his face—which, frankly, in the physical aesthetics of it, was really quite nice—or his weak body and deformed spine—which was nearly even unnoticeable if you put him in the right clothes, which he nearly never was wearing. Steven Grant Rogers was not conventionally handsome because there was something in the character of him that was completely unconventional, out of the norm, etc. etc. Everything about him from the weird posture of him and the way he chose to use his hands, and the way he often wouldn’t look at you when you were trying to have a conversation with him, or in the way that even when he would look at you his expression was kind of flattish, hard to read, or like he was having a hard time reading you, and half the time Bucky couldn’t be sure which it was. 

Three-quarters of the time, Steve wouldn’t talk to any of the other kids around the schoolyard, he’d sit like a clam by the wall and be reading, or drawing, and Bucky, like the insatiably curious trouble-seeker he was—well, he’d go over to watch, a couple of times. Steve wouldn’t look at him. He’d just keep drawing. 

The funny thing was—and Bucky was no dunce, he had a brain working in that skull of his—it wasn’t long for Bucky to cotton on that even though Steve wouldn’t say anything, he was drawing things to impress Bucky. He was drawing these figures and vehicles that looked like they came from pulps, mysteries and science fiction stories that Bucky was so nuts about. Steve was drawing to impress Bucky, instead of talking like a normal kid should have been doing, and something about that got to Bucky. It got under his skin. 

\---

Steve’s fights “for justice” or whatever they were also got under Bucky’s skin—but that was later, when he figured out that whatever he looked, Steve felt things like a volcano, he had the biggest heart of anybody around and would throw his fists to show it, but again. That was later. 

Steve didn’t look at anything in the same way that anyone else did, and it wasn’t because he was literally colorblind. He was just… different. He was so different that sometimes it made Bucky want to gnash his teeth together and “why didn’t you tell me about all of this,” when they were sixteen and had known each other for eight years and Steve had won some kind of art prize, a contest running through the newspaper, and the only way Bucky had found out about it was through the neighbors and—and—

Steve just looked at him, and Bucky couldn’t even tell what the guy was thinking, because all he said was, “You never asked.”

“You never tell me anything!” Bucky exploded. “You never say anything, and when you do say something it’s always something—too blunt, or too strange—and that weird thing you do with your hands, I keep telling you to quit it and—you know, sometimes I don’t even know why I put up with you—!”  


Steve was doing that thing. He was doing that thing where he couldn’t even be bothered to look Bucky in the eye, that kind of faraway look in him, and he. He didn’t even say anything. He just sat there like a lump.

Bucky finally just gave a yell of frustration and stomped out of that room, out of the Rogers’ tenement flat, down all of those stairs and out onto the street. He stomped around, almost mad enough to want to pick fights—he never picked a fight, except to fish Steve out of one—and then an hour later, he’d cooled down and stomped back up to Steve’s place. Mrs. Rogers was still working her shift at the hospital, it was just Steve in there. Steve who was sitting on the floor, kind of rocking and doing nothing, but then he stilled and looked up at Bucky, his eyes all big.

“Move over, you,” Bucky said, mulishly, and plunked himself next to Steve, all in Steve’s space, shoulder-to-shoulder. Steve went sort of prickled up then, but he didn’t move, which was maybe something. 

If Steve wasn’t so strange. If Steve wasn’t so sickly. If Steve wasn’t so many things, Bucky had had a dozen occasions, dozens of occasions, where he would have been tempted to fling himself on Steve, confess something of himself, something like those sexual deviants who you could always tell who they were around the neighborhood, those fairies up in Harlem, all kinds of folks. Maybe Steve would have understood, because he was different too, in his own way. Maybe Steve wouldn’t have been in the same way, but maybe he would have understood. 

Bucky kept it all to himself. He kept it to himself because Steve didn’t need all of that. He needed someone to take care of him right, not to put their burdens on him. 

“Shouldn’t you go home for dinner?” Steve asked, eventually—eventually eventually—and Bucky said “Hmm, well, soon” and didn’t move. 

He might have said in that moment, he never wanted to move, ever, but he’d have to. Soon. And wasn’t that the rub.


	2. Steve

Steve Rogers post-serum was a solidly built young man, but he was deemed as useless on the battle field, except as maybe cannon fodder. Unusually expensive canon fodder, in terms of the tax-payer dollar, but canon fodder all the same. Especially in the beginning: he took in too much sensory information. It didn’t necessarily overwhelm him in the way it might have in the past, but he’d sort of do “his thing” where he went into his own head… and when he came out of it, he’d always have, as the Colonel said, “some irritatingly perceptive and not always but sometimes useful insight to share with the rest of us common people.” 

What they had wanted to try was to use Steve for codebreaking, which was how Steve had ended up in Italy. Which was not the reason that Steve had gotten involved in a practically suicide rescue mission involving the 107th and one Sergeant Barnes. That had been all Steve. 

\---

In the early 21st Century, Steve Rogers was mostly known as the hero “Captain America.” He was most certainly not known for having been chosen for this specifically because of his status as a mentally disabled person, and because a certain Dr. Erskine had been moved by the work of a certain Austrian Dr. Hans Asperger, who had tried to save his child patients by telling the Nazi’s those functioning outside of the norm may yet have untapped gifts if supported and allowed to grow into them. 

In the 21st Century, thawed out of the ice, weirdly: the person who most took a shine to him first was a certain billionaire philanthropist genius, Tony Stark. 

At first Steve resisted. 

The first thing that Tony had said to him, at a cafe just outside Stark Tower: “God, I hate you! I can’t believe—my dad! Would treat you like some precious commodity, too pure, too precious for this world—while I! I!!!”

Then he’d sat down at Steve’s table uninvited, while Steve looked at him with what he hoped was undisguised repugnance, but Stark just smiled at him too wide and said, “Why don’t you and I blow this popsicle stand—and by you and I, I mean I’m going to harass you until you indulge me, and also that’s the paparazzi showed up already, wave for the cameras Steve—”

Steve allowed himself to be dragged away, under duress, mind you. 

The silence inside the Stark Tower lobby was a relief. Steve took a moment to sort of take it all in—and when he was finished, Tony was looking at him with blatant speculation. 

“Sometimes,” he said, “I think Dad was embarrassed because I was his own kid, but it’s different when you’re looking at somebody else’s.”

Steve squared his shoulders and said, “Do you always take up personal fights with strangers?” 

“Hmmm,” Tony said, “Maybe. We’re not strangers, though. I’ve had your picture up on the family mantle since I was an infant.”

Steve—Steve knew, he’d always known, that he was strange. After high school, he’d taken pains to cover it up, trying hard to fit in, learn how to talk to people—but this fellow, this Tony. He wore his eccentricity on his sleeve. He wouldn’t shut up. 

“Okay, but I was thinking,” Tony said, not quite bouncing on his toes. “I was thinking that instead of letting SHIELD squirrel you away for their cloak and dagger operations, etc. etc., I was thinking I’d ask you to work for me. I bet a guy like you, a guy like me, two guys like us. Besides, I feel guilty watching you sit out there like the world’s saddest golden retriever. Look at you, all sad. All golden retriever… ish.”

“I’ll, uh, think about it,” Steve said, and it probably was plain as day that he really didn’t care at all for this proposition. 

“I’ll have to sic Pepper on you, then,” Tony said, and then cackled at his own personal joke. “Just wait. You’ll love her.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Stark,” Steve said, firmly, and turned around and walked out of that lobby. 

When he got back to his apartment afterwards, he just felt: tired. He was tired, tired, tired. He had to have a lie down on the carpet and he stared up at the ceiling and weirdly couldn’t even think of getting up again. He should have gone for the gym, but the idea of going out again was too exhausting. Especially if he ran into Fury again. Particularly if he ran into Fury again. If he ran into absolutely anyone. 

\---

Half the time Steve never even… felt like he could really emotionally connect with anyone. Steve told this to no one: not Bucky, not Sam—and while he hadn’t told Natasha, she made like she’d guessed. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t care about people—if he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have hidden this thought of his. 

He just honestly didn’t feel like he had that connection with most people, and the worst of it was that it didn’t actually… bother him to think about that, especially when he was by himself. 

Except sometimes when he felt lonelier than anything. 

It went back and forth.

“Oh, if you’re going to talk about being weird,” Natasha said, and sucked down another mouthful of Starbuck’s caramel frappuccino. “I don’t know if I’ve genuinely acted like a civilian in years. Scratch that: hmm, probably never.”

She’d let herself into Steve’s place on a late Saturday morning, with Starbucks. 

“Well, you’re not a civilian,” Steve said automatically, and then took the other frappuccino when she offered it. “You wouldn’t be yourself if you acted like one.” 

“Literal as always, hmm?” Natasha asked around her straw. She was smiling in that secretive way of hers. “Adorable Steve, never change.” Then she said, “I’ve got a lead on your buddy. If you hop in the car now, we can swing around to pick up Sam before the lead’s gone cold.”

“Fine,” Steve said, and went to get his shield, still holding his Starbucks.


	3. Chapter 3

When they were still kids in the eighth grade: Steve was sitting on the school steps waiting for Bucky. He looked up and when Bucky came and smiled at him, Steve smiled back, and Bucky sort of looked at him and asked, “Why do you always wait for me to smile first?”

And Steve felt the smile stick and go strange, and he didn’t say, _because I didn’t know, when I was supposed to—_

He always smiled first, after that. He didn’t wait for Bucky. 

\---

Rumlow and the rest of the strike team never really took to Steve in maybe the way that they could have. They could sniff out the oddness of him. He couldn’t keep up with the exaggerated macho culture and the social cues, and the words coming out of his mouth never came out exactly right. Rumlow made the joke, more than once, that Steve would have gotten along well with the techs down in IT, and there wasn’t much mistaking what he meant by that. What a funny guy, that Steve. Sometimes, it seemed like they didn’t really, well, respect him, and Steve just didn’t say anything. 

Steve never said anything, because it seemed to him like too much complaining, but the entire experience of it was unpleasant and lonely and kind of alienating. 

It was like basic training all over again, surrounded by _that type_ of people. 

Of everybody, Steve got along with Natasha best. She was always doing strange things and saying strange things on purpose. She thought it was funny. She made observations in a deadpan and used little faces with parenthesis and semi-colons in her texts. The little emoji’s were instant reassurance to Steve, that he could tell a joke when he saw one, but it was pretty easy to tell when she was teasing in person too, the words coming out of her mouth wouldn’t have made logical sense otherwise.  

“How’s my favorite grandpa,” she’d say when she picked Steve up from his apartment. “Hope I’m not interrupting your daily routine of loneliness errands,” she said when she scooped him up from his morning run, “Christ, we need to get you a girlfriend.”

“Hmm, okay,” Steve said, looking at her with a kind of flat expression, which made Natasha burst out laughing and then she turned on the radio, which was playing Taylor Swift. She put on mirrored sunglasses and started yelling-singing along to “Shake it Off,” and eventually got Steve to yell-sing along too, the windows rolled down and the two of them sounding crazy with the music, all the way to the Triskelion. 

\---

When they weren’t out looking for Bucky, Steve went on long runs with Sam. Well, he ran longer runs than Sam, but they always hung out together afterwards. They talked about a lot of things. 

“No, no, but they were being assholes,” Sam said. “And I don’t even mean all of that Hydra fuckery. Your strike team sounds like it was full of assholes who used micro-aggression to put you down and feel better about themselves. I mean, Jesus.”

Steve looked out at the reflecting pool and said, “Sometimes I don’t know why people keep wanting to put me in leadership positions. It’s not that I don’t want to do the job, it’s more like I just can’t tell sometimes what people are thinking when they look at me.” 

Sam sort of nudged Steve’s shoulder and said, “Man, the only ‘problem’ I can see with you is that you’re too honest. Some people can’t take that, I guess. You don’t put on the kind of social presentations that a lot of people do.”

“That’s a pretty big problem,” Steve pointed out.

“Well, yeah, it can be,” Sam admitted. “But come on. It’s not always.”

\---

When Bucky came back, he was sitting like a hobo by the front door of Steve’s new apartment building. He looked up and said to Steve first, in a small, rough voice, “You always used to wait before smiling at people. And now you always smile at everybody.” 

Steve felt like there was a lump in his throat as he knelt down to face Bucky. He said, “You know, I learned that from you. You taught me so much Bucky, you always knew exactly what to do.”

Bucky wasn’t smiling. He looked very tired. His hair hung in his face from underneath his baseball cap. He worried at chapped lips with his teeth, and then he said, “I don’t know what to do, anymore.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said, his voice coming out a little choked. His eyes felt wet. “It’s okay, we can learn together,” and Bucky let Steve pull him into his arms.


End file.
